Do you have a dedicated marketing budget? Perhaps it is rolled into something else like sales, advertising or promotion. Or maybe you’re a small business and you are scrambling, scraping and pinching here and there or pulling dollars from your “other” line item, which was supposed to be for unseen items and emergencies. Whatever your situation, whatever your budget size, whatever your marketing goals, every business wants to get the most for their money. So, today we’d like to present five opportunities to get the biggest bang for your marketing bucks.
- Focus on public relations.
Defined by the Public Relations Society of American as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics,” a good PR strategy will not cost money in the way traditional advertising does. But it does take time to build relationships with reporters and editors, target the appropriate channels and craft your pitch. As a bonus, a story about your business will probably be remembered more than advertising and will have a more credible edge.
- Become a social media guru.
A social media plan involves more than just a few random tweets here and there and a Facebook post once a day. Do research on your target audience and where they spend their social media time, what motivates them and how they make their purchasing decisions. Build your plan taking into account your research results and thoughtfully consider every detail including the day of the week and the time of day of your posts.
- Implement SEO.
Search engine optimization can be an all-consuming process to make sure people find you on the web when they are searching around for your industry. Simple steps include these: keep your website fresh with frequent content updates; add analytics codes to the back end; consider a plug-in such as Yoast if you have a WordPress site; make sure your website is mobile friendly. Advanced steps might involve hiring an expert. If so, make your expectations clear and keep a watchful eye on the progress.
- Network more.
Expand your professional network and learn to spread the word about yourself. Join business or community groups in the area and pass out business cards. Get others to talk about you. It is not an overnight thing. Have patience – it works.
- Use data.
Study the numbers to find out what works and what people like and dislike. What posts are being shared, what clicks are people following on your website, what blogs are popular, what time of day, where do people find you. All this data and more is readily available and can help you tweak, revise or overhaul. Be flexible and open to make changes as indicated by the data.
Fine-tune your negotiating skills to stretch your marketing budget and supplement it with your internal efforts and expertise and Maximize your Marketing Momentum as we like to say at LGK.
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Outstanding story over again! Thanks a lot;)